Monday, November 24, 2014

Telstra, Ericsson and Qualcomm Hit 450 Mbps with LTE-A Cat9

Telstra, Ericsson and Qualcomm achieved LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) peak downlink speed of 450 Mbps (Category 9) by combining three 20 MHz LTE carriers on commercially available Ericsson multi-standard hardware and LTE software.

The demonstration utilized 60 MHz of spectrum, with three 20 MHz LTE carriers in Band 3 (1800 MHz), Band 7 (2600 MHz) and Band 28 (APT 700 MHz) respectively. The successful utilization of Band 28 is significant as this band is gaining momentum as a global LTE band, with the potential to serve 2.1 billion people. Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. (QTI), a wholly owned subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, Category 9 LTE-A modem and Ericsson high-performance LTE software (Networks Software 14B) and hardware supporting the company's multi-standard RBS 6000 family of base stations for macro and small cell networks drove today’s results.

The companies said the milestone confirms the maturity and readiness of the ecosystem to support operator deployments of LTE-A 450 Mbps data speeds. It builds on the May 2014 demonstration of the same speed by Ericsson and Telstra, achieved with a user test device on Telstra’s commercial network.

Mike Wright, Telstra Group Managing Director, Networks, says: "We are pleased to play a role in this milestone with Ericsson and Qualcomm. Our customers are keen to see the benefits of LTE-A Carrier Aggregation across our network and today’s achievement demonstrates that Telstra is working with industry leaders in order to develop the next generation of fast and reliable mobile data services. We look forward to offering our customers devices incorporating this new chipset when available in the market."

Thomas Nor̩n, Vice President and Head of Radio Product Management, Ericsson says: "As consumers, businesses and industries are transformed through mobility, network performance becomes a key differentiator. Leading operators such as Telstra are looking for solutions that improve app coverage Рnetwork performance from the user perspective. With LTE-Advanced carrier aggregation, app coverage is improved right to the cell edge. Showing this commercial solution live on both network and terminal, with our partners Telstra and Qualcomm, represents a key milestone on the road to large-scale deployments."

http://www.ericsson.com

In February 2014, Ericsson and Qualcomm Technologies conducted the first inter-vendor interoperability testing of LTE Category 6, which promises potential speeds of up to 300 Mbps.

The final stages of testing, which were completed in collaboration with Telstra, was based on ready-to-release versions of Ericsson's L14A software release. Ericsson said its L14A software leverages load balancing for better spectrum efficiency and improved user experience during high-load situations. It supports all bandwidth and frequency combinations for up to 40MHz Carrier Aggregation, providing users with speeds of up to 300 Mbps.  The test also used Qualcomm;s fourth-generation 3G/LTE multimode modem, the Qualcomm Gobi 9x35 chipset.

IBM and Ericsson Collaborate on 5G Antennas

Ericsson and IBM have agreed to jointly research phased-array antenna designs for 5G.

The companies plan to develop prototype systems that will serve more mobile users, enable a multitude of new services on the same frequency, as well as offer data speeds that are orders of magnitude faster than today - competitive to existing cable and wired internet access speeds.

Ericsson said phased-array design allows for more directional antennas that are electrically-steerable and will have significant weight and flexibility advantages over existing mechanical antennas. The outcome of these technological advances will integrate on the order of a hundred antennas and radios on a single chip smaller than a credit card in size, greatly facilitating the use of these technologies for high-capacity small cells in indoor spaces and dense downtown areas.

Thomas Norén, Head of Product Management Radio, Ericsson, says: "Ericsson is performing world-class radio research that will enable the extremely high data rates that will be required in the future.  We have already showed 5 Gbps over-the-air in trials back in July. We are also working to solve the size barrier and look forward to developing antenna technology with IBM that will open up possibilities for new uses. We recently launched the industry's most flexible small cell, which allows for concurrent use of multiple technologies. Even with its tablet-sized footprint, the form-factor was limited by components inside. This research collaboration will help us enable mobile network builds that provide the right coverage and capacity even in the densest urban environment."

Dr. Mehmet Soyuer, Manager of the Communication and Computation Subsystems Department, IBM Research says: "We have accumulated over 10 years of experience in developing radio frequency (RF) integrated circuit and packaging solutions, demonstrating highly integrated phased arrays for various applications. We look forward to collaborating with Ericsson to help shape the future of mobile communications."
Inventing

http://www.ericsson.com

Xilinx and NXP Collaborate on LTE-A and 5G

Xilinx and NXP have been working together to combine Xilinx's newest crest factor reduction (CFR) and digital pre-distortion (DPD) SmartCORE IP with NXP's Gen9 LDMOS RF highly efficient power amplifier technology. The combination of NXP's advanced power amplifier devices and Xilinx All Programmable devices and radio IP enables customers to implement smaller, lighter and higher reliability radios suitable for use in next-generation wireless infrastructure equipment.

Power amplifiers of higher efficiency achieve the same radio output power and enable a CapEx saving through the use of lower power rated devices and reduced cooling mechanics. Xilinx's Zynq®-7000 All Programmable SoC is the first hardware and software programmable device supporting the latest generation of CPRI at 10.1Gbps and JESD204B at 12.5 Gbps line rates.

Xilinx's latest CFR and DPD IP now support up to 100MHz of radio bandwidth in single RAT configurations in addition to supporting MC-GSM with frequency hopping in single RAT or multi-RAT configurations up to 75MHz.

"Xilinx and NXP will continue to collaborate on future technology standards such as LTE-A and 5G, and expand the system impact with the most efficient and easy to adopt combination of radio algorithms and power amplifier technology," saidDavid Hawke, director of wireless communications at Xilinx.

http://www.xilinx.com
http://www.nxp.com


Palo Alto Posts Record Sales of $192.3 million, up 50%

Palo Alto Networks reported total revenue for its fiscal first quarter grew 50 percent year-over-year to a record $192.3 million, compared with $128.2 million in the fiscal first quarter of 2014. GAAP net loss for the fiscal first quarter was $30.1 million, or $0.38 per diluted share, compared with a net loss of $7.9 million, or $0.11 per diluted share, in the fiscal first quarter of 2014.

Palo Alto Networks recorded fiscal first quarter non-GAAP net income of $12.8 million, or $0.15 per diluted share, compared with non-GAAP net income of $6.2 million, or $0.08 per diluted share, in the fiscal first quarter of 2014. A reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP information is contained in the tables below.

"We had a strong start to fiscal year 2015, outperforming expectations across all of our reported metrics. As the leading provider of the next-generation enterprise security platform, we delivered 52 percent billings growth and 50 percent revenue growth on a year-over-year basis," said Mark McLaughlin, president and chief executive officer of Palo Alto Networks. "In today's increasingly complex threat environment, enterprise customers recognize that a true, integrated and automated platform delivering prevention capabilities offers superior security with a superior total cost of ownership advantage. Our results demonstrate the differentiation and sustainability of that unique platform, the scalability of our go-to-market model and our ongoing growth potential."

http://www.paloaltonetworks.com

Where are SDN and NFV today? Dan Joe Barry @Napatech Responds



 Filmed at Layer123's SDN & OpenFlow World Congress in Düsseldorf, Germany with Dan Joe Barry, VP of Marketing, Napatech.





PMC Supplies 12Gb/s SAS Storage for Lenovo

PMC Sierra announced that Lenovo has selected its storage solutions for external connectivity across its ThinkServer portfolio.

The Lenovo 8885E by PMC card delivers the full throughput of 12Gb/s SAS and 6.6GB/s PCI Express 3.0 to maximize the performance of ThinkServer scale-out storage. The card will be offered on Lenovo rack and tower servers.

“Lenovo’s ThinkServer products are versatile enough to handle workloads ranging from those found in SMBs to enterprise data centers,” said Pete Hazen, vice president of the Data Center & Server Group at PMC. “A key component of that flexibility comes from their ability to scale based on business needs. IT professionals and data center managers will find that this PMC-based card addresses their immediate storage needs and allows them to future proof against ever-increasing workloads and emerging storage requirements.”

http://www.pmcs.com/storage

Huawei to Establish NFV Open Labs in China, Germany, US

Huawei is preparing to open a number of Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) Open Labs, aiming at stimulating innovation, industry development and collaboration with operators. The first three locations are China, Germany and the USA.

Huawei said it believes that the main added values from NFV are that it will break the isolation of traditional telecommunications networks, shorten innovation cycles, reduce operating costs and create an open industry chain, which requires processes for open standardization and open source cloud technology.

http://pr.huawei.com/en/news/hw-399168-nfv.htm#.VHQM_YujOM4

Hurricane Electric Continues European Expansion

Hurricane Electric, which operates what is considered to be the world’s largest IPv6-native Internet backbone, has added a new Point of Presence (PoP) at Interxion Dusseldorf in Germany.

Hurricane Electric said it is continuing to grow its footprint within Germany’s extensive data center industry. This is its sixth POP in Germany. The PoP will enable customers to experience improved fault tolerance, lower latency and increased network capacity through 100GE (100 Gigabit Ethernet), 10GE (10 gigabit Ethernet), GigE (1 gigabit Ethernet) and 100BaseT network connections. Additionally, customers will now have the opportunity to exchange IP traffic, or “peer,” with Hurricane Electric’s global network.

Hurricane Electric employs a resilient fiber-optic topology, and has four redundant paths crossing North America, two separate paths between the U.S. and Europe, and rings in Europe and Asia.

http://www.he.net